Ixigo’s 18 million users email and hashed passwords stolen

In a fast-changing digital world, data leaks or hackings have become a frequent phenomenon.

The latest addition in the victim list of the data breach is online travel aggregation platform Ixigo, whose 18 million users data, largely email IDs and hashed passwords, were stolen by unidentified hackers.

The online travel platform has said to be investigating the alleged security breach. It claims no major threat to users as the company has not been saving or storing payment cards or financial information of its users.

Instead, it hashes users passwords with a one-way hashing algorithm.

We have recently switched to two-factor authentication. We have reset the authentication tokens of our users and are resetting passwords preemptively, Ixigo founder and CEO Aloke Bajpai told Entrackr.

The hacking is part of a major security breach involving 620 million user records from 16 websites globally, according to a TechCrunch report. As per hacker’s listings, Ixigo used the old and outdated MD5 hashing algorithm to scramble passwords, which can be decoded easily.

Ixigo claims to have 100 million users on its platform. The Gurugram-based firm had last year introduced an offline mode for its trains app on Android where users can check train running status, booking info and search trains amongst several other services.

Meanwhile, with every passing year, cases of data theft have been increasing in India. More data records were leaked during the first half of 2017 (1.9 billion) than all of 2016 (1.37 billion).

Food tech firm Zomato in May 2017 faced a massive data leak when hackers stole names, emails, and passwords of its users.

India is the third worst affected nation by cyber attack among to 100 vulnerable country list. According to another report, almost 74% of the organizations in India have not done a risk assessment including cybersecurity.

And if it continues then it might just impact India growing digital economy, which is expected to be $1 trillion in the next four years.

About Author

Jitendra has spent more than seven years in journalism. He had been founding-member of content startups such as Newzstreet, Indiasamvad and iamwire. Prior to that he did long, deeply reported feature stories for The Indian Express and handled desk at IANS. Born in Bokaro, he holds a Bachelor of Mass Media (Journalism) degree from ISC, Pune. He currently resides in New Delhi, where he moved nearly seven years ago. Among the things that excite him is wonder about life and its creative potential in every sphere.